This short essay argues that the congruence and proportionality test of City of Boerne v. Flores—which the U.S. Supreme Court applies to laws passed pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment—should not apply to federal voting rights legislation. This test is inapplicable because the...

The independent state legislature theory provides that state legislatures are not constrained by their respective state constitutions in exercising the authority that the U.S. Constitution delegates to states over federal elections. In its most extreme form, the doctrine permits state...

H.R. 1 is proposed federal legislation that, if enacted, would address issues in voting, campaign finance, ethics, and legislative redistricting. Given its scope, it is unsurprising that the bill has encountered its fair share of critics, who portray the legislation as unprecedented and unduly...

This Essay argues that the Reconstruction Acts, which readmitted Arkansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Virginia, and Mississippi back into the union, are a source of constitutional meaning that bears on the right to vote under the Reconstruction...

Recent controversies in campaign finance have generated concerns that wealthy donors will dominate the political landscape, with Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission standing as the high‐water marks in the U.S. Supreme Court's...

This short essay, written for Notre Dame Law Review's conference on congressional gridlock, argues that gridlock is an expected and integral component of the legislative process. The bicameralism and presentment requirements of Article I of the U.S. Constitution make legislation difficult to...

In answering the question of how judges should approach unconscious discrimination claims, scholars ignore a practical solution to this problem: by putting the burden on the firm to reduce the incidence of unconscious bias ex ante, as opposed to putting the burden on the employee of proving it...